Art of the soul
by maroongrad
Summary: Abraham strives to turn the violent vampire he captured into a predictable, obedient, simple tool. Alucard strives to retain who he is against the monotony and restrictions that crush his very soul. A chance discovery helps him obtain the key needed to keep himself alive on the inside, instead of becoming the emotionless automaton Abraham expects.
1. Chapter 1

New story. No idea if I'll get a chance for any more chapters any time soon...but I got this one down :)

Obtain

It was the fluttering that caught the eye of the vampire. Not much movement, but in the soggy gritty gray slush, the tiny corner of a bit of paper...fluttered. The troops milled about in the wet raw night to his right. He was well out of their sight in the darkness, which suited him perfectly. Abraham...was close enough to see him, but also watching the troops. He was safely unobserved, and with the swft and silent gracefulness of his kind, Alucard plucked up the paper and the dull bit of metal under it.

A pound note and silver shilling? Bemused, Alucard stared at the currency, the first he had held in years. The pound note was very wet and fragile...careful white gloves tucked it into a sleeve to dry. The shilling was sturdier and immediately scrutinized. Tiny and worn, Victoria's scratched and begrimed face adorned the front, the finest details lost to time but still radiating the grace and poise the Queen was known for. On the back -

"Alucard!" Crisp and demanding, the voice cut into his thoughts, shattering his concentration and startling the vampire. Abraham was now watching him, walking towards him, and the expression was not kind. Alucard had done something other than simply wait quietly and shivered a bit inside, wondering what Abraham would do.

Not much, truly, not for simply picking something up to look at after half an hour of boredom. But he WOULD take the shilling, at the least. And yes, the man's demanding hand thrust out, waiting. "What do you have?" Not even a question, really, more of a command. With an internal sigh that showed nothing on his carefully blank features, Alucard placed the wet, dirty coin in his Master's palm.

"And where did you get this?" Abraham probably thought he'd stolen it. He was quite capable of picking the pockets of anyone around him without their knowledge, but was not so foolish as to entertain himself doing so. Abraham demanded perfect behavior...anything outside of that could result in punishment from a lost meal to a month confined to his cell to a week without his coffin. Small infractions might call for a mere welt from the silver-tipped crop always tucked in the man's belt, waiting for an excuse to mark the vampire.

The white hand pointed downward at the small pit in the slush, now filling with dirty, ice-cold water and the quiet, gray voice murmured. "It was there."

Abraham's face relaxed a bit. The vampire HAD been standing very quietly, after all. He hadn't even needed to take a single step to pick up the coin. And it really wasn't a great deal of money; it might buy a few pints at the pub, but not much else. Feeling generous, unusually mellow towards the vampire, Abraham grabbed the white hand, turned it, and placed the coin on the palm. Fingers were folded about it to hold the coin tight. "You might as well keep it." And a touch of cruelty, too, for what could a vampire actually want, and when would he be able to purchase it? "Maybe you can buy something you'd like with the money you found." Striding back into the night, Abraham went back to the men, leaving the silent and surprised vampire behind him.

Alucard wasn't entirely certain what a shilling could buy, but a pound note could buy a great many things. He'd simply have to find a way to use them...but his mind was already turning over what he wanted to get, somehow.

Sitting curled on the dirty floor of the coach, back against the side, crouched among the mud and boots and wet ends of coats, he thought all the trip back. Yes, he knew what he wanted, yes he did. And he'd determined how to obtain it, too.

x x xx x x

The butler might have had a grand suite of rooms; main room, small office, bedroom, even a private bath, but the lower-level butlers had small cramped rooms. Private, but small, and little spare time to be in them for naught but sleep. Even so, Evan had found both space to store an instrument and time to practice it...at first. As the months wore on and he became familiar with his job, his duties expanded. Enjoyable, challenging, and he found himself liking his employment very much indeed. Yet his viola had done nothing but gather dust in its case under the bed for over half a year, and he hadn't had more than a few moments with it for the months prior.

Frankly, he could use the space it took up and he didn't really miss it...after all, his gal Sally was far more interesting! And so, when the simple note was found slipped under his door asking if he'd sell it, he was intrigued...and quite willing. A few days later, his response vanished from the downstairs table, to be replaced by a pound note. The viola was worth more...but not by much. It had been cheap and well-used when he'd gotten it, and the last time he played, the loose tuning pegs and slight wobble to the neck made it difficult. He could take time and money to fix it...or buy a pretty shawl and flowers for his darling.

The viola arrived and vanished from the table. He hadn't been able to decipher the scrawl of a name but day staff and night staff, butlers and potboys, were strictly separated by status and schedules. It was easiest to simply pass money and instrument by way of a small side-table in a rarely-used hallway. And the shilling to buy replacement strings gave him a few extra pence to keep once the packet of coiled wires was delivered.

Sally loved the rich brown velvet shawl, drapingg it over her shoulders at any excuse, preening on how it made her large dark eyes seem even larger and softer. He never gave a second thought to his odd trade, conducted on scraps of paper, once his love had expressed her delight in a very pleasantly physical way.

x x xx x x

Loving fingers raced across the surfaces, barely touching, the white gloves a hair from the surface as the vampire grinned over his new possession. His only possession...everything he "had" was only his because Abraham let him use it. That included his coffin. Van Hellsing had not been hesitant in denying the vampire access as punishment, coldly recording the resulting anguish and decay in precise scientific detail. Clothing, blood, even intangibles such as rest, were at the whim of the human.

This, this was his and his alone. He nearly shook with excitement, with the joy at the possibility of becoming something more than a tool. Taken out to hunt, stored away when done, maintained physically and with as much consideration of "him" as if he had been a hammer. The sheer monotonous eternal days were broken by hunts...and naught else. No conversations, no interactions, no expression of who he was. At best, he could steal a few minutes away in the house upstairs but only if he remained invisible to the inhabitants. He could not speak to them, touch them interact with them...

But he had found his loophole. He could take nothing from Abraham that was not given, but discarded paper? Trash? That was in the household, but not "property"...only waste. And filching a scrap of paper was simple. A nail from the decaying crates piled about the basement stairs was sharpened by running it across stone, and the black from candles created a convincing black ink. And so he had crept up late at night, listening and peering and moving as quietly as only a vampire could, staying unseen and undectected and leaving his notes, retrieving responses, and finally exchanging for this musical instrument.

This instrument.

His.

A chance to give voice to who he was, to resurrect the soul that was near to crushed inside.

And so his hands shook and he shivered in the tumult of emotions and caressed, so very carefully and delicately, the battered wood and frayed strings of the most beautiful thing he had ever owned.


	2. Chapter 2

Late, late at night, or early morning...no one awake or around to hear...and he had no idea how to play a viola. Still, Alucard thought, head cocked as he viewed his lovely, wonderful, amazing, glorious prize, that didn't matter much. He simply needed to CREATE, to DO, and this, this would allow him to do so. Played incorrectly or not, it would still make music.

And...loose. A slight frown marred the porcelain features as a long, narrow white digit touched the neck of the instrument, and it...rocked. Not well-connected, but he'd known to expect problems when he purchased it. He didn't CARE. If he had to turn it into a drum, he would! But a loose neck...this was merely a problem to be solved.

No glue, no fine, small nails (and did he want to put a nail in this? he thought not), nothing that seemed useful. And so he wandered through the basement, mind turning busily, looking for something, some discarded bit of trash, that he could claim. By morning, the vampire was hunched over, slowly and meticulously working a soft bit of paper into the gap between the wood pieces. Slowly and carefully, using hairs plucked from his head to gently press it into that tiny gap, Alucard shimmed the neck piece.

"Still loose..." Alucard stared at it, mind turning over possibilities. He needed something to add a last bit of strength. Glue would be best but there was simply nothing suitable that he'd be able to access. A strap, wrapped about the weak point, would also work...but any leather or material where he was would be rotted and worthless. His clothes? No...Abraham would notice. And they were Abraham's clothes that he was 'allowed' to wear. There was a possibility, a probability, that deliberately damaging them would result in their removal. No, being naked except when on a hunt was not something he looked forward to... But what?

The hair peeking out from the freshly-shimmed neck gave him an idea, and nimble fingers put that idea into practice. A thin, loosely-braided black-and-grey cord looped tightly thrice around the neck where it joined the body of his instrument...and red eyes narrowed in delight as a mouth spread in a smile.

Time to tune it. How? He didn't know, not really. He knew that it SHOULD be tuned, minstrels over the centuries had taken time to carefully tune their instruments. But how? The knobs, yes...but...what should it sound like? With a mental shrug, Alucard reached out to carefully pluck a string. The sound it produced, while having a rich resonance that pulled at his emotions (so long without any sort of beauty in his existence!), was...flat. Off.

And the sun was rising. He'd managed to restore the integrity of his instrument. The tuning would have to wait until the next night. It wouldn't do to have his viola seen and taken before it had even been played...where? Ah, yes. The rotten crates had mouldered down here long before Abraham arrived to take over the estate. The man had done nothing with them but add another half-dozen to the pile, then...forgot them. His carefully-repaired viola would be safe from discovery, tucked under a handful of those musty slats.

And so he fell asleep in the coffin as the sun pinked the horizon, heart dancing with subdued joy at the chance to do something more than simply drink, sleep, and kill.

x x xx x x

Tighter, tighter, tighter...there... A fingertip set the thickest wire to humming softly with a touch, a rich, clear, pleasing note. Not a bit flat. Which note, he had no idea. An appreciation for music was expected in any aristocrat, but the playing of music had been for minstrels and ladies. For men, the music of sword and bow, clangs and twangs, was allowed. This note hummed, coloring the dim grey basement with a touch of treble illumination, making it seem just that much less dark, dim, empty, and dull.

The next string, a different sound. Unsure of what it SHOULD sound like, Alucard simply tightened it, gently twisting the peg at the end until the note rang true and clean and clear. Again, on the fourth string. A pure note. Not the same as the first two, perhaps not the intended notes at all...but...pure. Perfect. And then the fourth and final string joined the subdued chorus.

Playing all four together, even softly, was just an unpleasant mishmash of sound. A frown pulled across the vampire's face. Had he done this correctly? Unlikely...with no guidance and no experience! And so the fingers plucked away at the strings, pulling forth a variety of carefully muted, dimmed sounds. A hand moved to the neck, compressing the strings here, and here, and there, the ear listening and hearing how each string changed.

And changed. And changed. Frowning, Alucard stilled the strings with his palm...and gently plucked. 1, 2, 3, and 4...all of them...off. The fourth one not so badly as the others, but each had slowly flattened in sound, gone from a pure hum to a dull tone. Alucard retuned it, played again...and found the sound changing once more. A rub of the thumb across the tip of a peg, and it turned ever so slightly. These, too, were worn out. How to fix this?

His pondering and musings were interupted by the banging of the stairway door. Not unexpected, that noise; Abraham stomped and trampled about with no concern for the effect of the loud noise on a being trapped in a tomb's silence. The viola was quickly thrust under the pile of wood, and Alucard returned to his room. Abraham expected him to be waiting silently; anything else would bring a reprimand at best and too often a punishment.

Abraham opened the door to find his monster sitting quietly in the corner, eyes staring forward at nothing, inert and unmoving. He had instructed that the vampire be out of the coffin and available each evening; Alucard did so, but appeared no more alert than if the monster had remained in the coffin. He'd never quite determined how aware the beast was when in such a state; it appeared to be a trance, Alucard in a sort of stasis, though he'd never discovered how deep the trance went. It couldn't be too terribly deep, for the vampire would drink its meal once it was left. As was routine, he gave a few seconds of inspection to Alucard, verifying that the beast appeared healthy, hair only partially greyed, thin but not bony, clothes not yet needing repairs or replacement. Satisfied, Abraham set the bottle on the begrimed floor, snatched up the empty bottle from the previous day, and left.

While waiting, internally impatient and anxious, Alucard had occupied his mind and distracted it from the proximity of both blood and Master by pondering the issue of the loose tuning pegs and how this should be fixed. Paper wouldn't do at all, the pegs had to be free to turn to tighten in the future. Wetting them would swell the wood and make for a tight hold, but would also rot the wood and then dry out anyways. He'd have to replace them...but how to create new ones with no tools? By the time Abraham had finished his nightly inspection, Alucard had conceived of a handful of solutions and was prepared to implement one. Already, the challenge of simply restoring the functions of this instrument was waking neglected parts of his mind, lubricating and blowing the dust off long-unused neurons, requiring creativity and thought and attention to details, solving problems and recognizing potential drawbacks.

He had teeth...not what should be used, but hard and sharp. It was not long before he had chewed a thick, solid splinter of wood to an appropriate length, sharp tips nicking off extra and shaping a flattened end for fingerholds. Not even remotely round, the body of the peg was slowly and carefully rubbed on the corners of stones. Rounded and shaped by the mason that cut them, they had rounded more with age and grime...but slowly, slowly, the rasp of wood on the edges of the granite blocks was taking layer after layer of wood from the presumptive peg. Careful testing showed that it was not quite small enough, not quite...there. Ready. A nail, sharpened to a fine point, gouged a very careful trough in the peg. It should have a hole through it, really...but that just wasn't possible, he didn't have anything fine and strong enough to bore such a hole. This should work, helping anchor the end of the wire...

And it was ready. Pressed carefully into the hole almost too small for the little wooden bit, it promised to hold firmly. Wire wrapped tight about its center, then tightened on the neck...tighter, testing, testing, tighter...done. A pure, clear note...and it was holding. A grin broke out as one hand raced up and down the wire, the second plucking it, enjoying immensely the range of sounds it produced. And that was only one string. He hadn't even touched the bow.

It was late the next night, nearly morning, before his completed, tuned, lovely viola was tucked away out of sight. Almost too late, awake too long and he'd be clumsy, awkward, perhaps drop it...not tonight. It was secure and undamaged, and Alucard made it safely to his coffin and pulled the smile from his face before the rising sun pressed him into slumber.

Tomorrow...he'd learn to play.


	3. Chapter 3

Hubby is on Baby Duty. I am most studiously not doing any of the things I ought to be doing, and am instead finishing yet another chapter. :)

Drawing Music

It was amazing. He had spent weeks, hours each night, exploring the limits of his instrument. It was difficult to find time when the voices overhead were faint and far away enough to not be overheard by any unintentional eavesdroppers...and even so, he'd made mistakes and overheard snatches of the employees' conversations, wondering about the mystery musician. Each had assumed it was some other employee and the debate was minor and easily forgotten; far too many people lived in the household and most had some sort of hobby or another. Unless it was disturbing their sleep or their work, it was only briefly brought to attention and then quickly ignored.

It had been necessary, then, to find a silent place to indulge himself, and the arched space under a heavy stone staircase seemed perfect. It was closed off except for a small squared opening, empty but for spiders. Isolated and small, if it had a larger opening he might well have found himself mouldering there rather than the somewhat-less-cramped and more-visible room he'd been relegated to. The sound echoed off some surfaces, was absorbed by the layers of mildew and dust on others, and muffled. The addition of a false door, pieced together from scraps of boards from the ever-useful pile of pallets and crates, was the final touch. The rusty nails securing it together held two layers of wood together; it was thick and surprisingly dense despite its decrepit appearance. Pulled across the opening, it served the dual purpose of blocking any view of himself and muffled a good portion of the sounds he drew from the viola.

And sounds he drew. Tucked under his chin in an approximation of how true violists had played, the bow held at various angles and in various grips, fingers pressing and sliding and even plucking along the neck, he drew an astonishing assortment of sounds from his prize. Soft wails and cries from the drag of the bow along wires gave voice to his misery; at other times, the whisper of a finger down the neck and quick cupping movements of a palm formed the deeply-missed whisper of wind among the pines of his long-lost mountain home. A rapid sawing of the bow at the highest of pitches created the voices of the wolf packs, calling and crying in the cold clear nights of Rumania. At other times, stacatto steps and swirling whirling descants called to mind the swirls of skirts and tapping feet of the ladies in great ballroom dances, the graceful and powerful swoops and bows of the men escorting the flowers of nobility across a gleaming floor.

And sounds he drew...although the bow slowdly and steadily frayed, and strings wore and snapped despite his careful light touches and care. The bow, reduced to a few remaining threads, was regretfully placed aside, and fingers and palms stroked sound from four, then three, then two strings...and finally to the last, remaining wire.

When it broke, it nearly took his heart with it...and he was alone again, the oppressive, empty, unchanging silence seeming all the greater now that the viola no longer sang out in challenge.

Abraham's nightly visits saw no change, noticed no difference, the vampire's unchanging face concealing both the joyful musings on new sounds and techniques as thoroughly as it now concealed the sorrow and loss.

But it was difficult to go back to blank nothingness now that his soul had been stirred, had found some form of release and expression that had been denied under the iron control and silvered fist of Hellsing. And so he railed internally, searching and hunting for a replacement, and found it.


	4. Chapter 4

Did vampires become sick? Ill? Alucard was not performing up to his usual standard. As ordered, the vampire had taken down the prey, a half-mad cackling weak beast that was at most a few weeks old. It had left a bloody swath for those few weeks, but it would never be a match for his own vampire.

And Alucard had destroyed it, with a single bullet. Granted, the monetary savings of not replacing a half-dozen silver bullets was appreciated, but the vampire's behavior was...off. It was a monster, and no matter how tamed and contained it was, his vampire never missed a chance to taunt and tease a victim; "missing" with bullets to only wound, moving slowly enough that the prey would begin to believe it could escape by running, on rare occasions even allowing a few injuries to himself. Taking away his blood for a few days had stopped that little stunt. Wounds meant healing which meant more blood was needed, it was a drain on the organization physically and financially! Never had a hunt ended in less than an hour, the damned beast would drag it out to the last possible second, its true nature revealed in its glowing eyes, bared fanges, and unrelenting cruelty.

Tonight the vampire had shuffled out of the coach, instead of his usual graceful movement. He'd stopped and simply stood, not sniffing the breeze, watching the moon, or doing any other manner of delaying tactics. And then, unexpectedly, the heavy gun had lifted, tracked a fast-moving foe briefly, and...fired. The ghouls that could be heard shuffling and groaning towards them turned into the soft whoosh of falling ash and muffled thuds of spongy, decayed limbs landing on grass.

And then the vampire had stood there, unmoving and unspeaking, just...waiting. Waiting for a command, completely and absolutely inert. He had thought the vampire quiescent before...but this time? The vampire had been a fount of activity compared to the current monster that stood waiting. Shoulders slumped, hands dangling, grey-barely red-gaze fixed blankly on the ground.

"Alucard!" No response, not even a blink or a twitch. Again... "Alucard!" Nothing. No eyes glancing submissively at his feet, no supressed, barely-visible twitch of startlement, no tightening of the face in any worry at all. Abraham's own eyes narrowed; was he being ignored? Snubbed by his own property?

"Get in the coach." A pause, not the immediate response normally present, but there. And then the vampire turned and trudged, almost stumbling on the rough grass, to the coach. Slow, the beast was SLOW. Mentally, it was...not there. It was reminiscent of the times he'd taken the coffin from it and the vampire was fighting fatigue and decay and hunger. But it moved, clambered slowly and awkwardly into the coach, and simply sat in the nearest corner. Generally it could be counted on to find the least muddy place on the cramped floor, but this time...it sat in the nearest corner, the one that took the least awkward effort to reach.

Ill? Tired? Hungry? Additional visual inspection showed that the vampire was no thinner, no greyer than usual. He'd wait a few more days, see if this was passing. With a mental snort at the humor, he noted that it wasn't like it would kill the beast, after all!

x x xx x x 

Nothing, there was nothing...his viola was worn to uselessness. It made a poor drum, even; he'd tapped and rubbed and thumped gently with his palm, and the resonances were there...but there were very few sounds it could make. A heartbeat thudded up from it, the racing pulse of a frightened man...and it had only made him hungry. The rattling beats of a horse's hooves were next, walking and trotting and cantering and a gallop, the slight syncopation of changing leads...but...that was limited as well. And the viola really was not made for this, the body too delicate to withstand use as a percussive body.

He'd managed the hunt, pulling himself from his grey funk long enough to destroy the vermin he could see hiding in the trees...but fell right back into it once he'd performed his function. Even the thought of destroying the worthless runt, of painting the ground with its blood and viscera, the melody of its pained screams...no. Not worth the effort, the physical movement, the strain of thought and thinking. There was no attraction in that expression of himself, now that the form he had become dependent on was gone.

And so he destroyed it, and sat in the coach, and tried very hard not to think or even exist, not for a short time at least. His mind wandered back to the existence he'd lead in Rumania, the wind on the parapets of his castle, the view from the high turret. Once, he'd watched the Ottomans from that turret as they encountered the horrors of his special garden, each bloody red human rose impaled on its own thorn, become a stem, and decorating the land up to his castle with gore. It worked...the entire Turkish army had turned in horror, the agony and slow pain he'd ordered for the prisoners being more than even those grotesque, violent foes could stomach.

That had been his own special place, where he could take himself away and think. His brides and servants knew to never bother him, even the bats gave him a wide berth. He would survey his domain, scent the distant and faint fires from the hearths of the villages, hear the cries and calls of the wolves, sometimes see the wild deer creep onto the castle grounds to graze on what grass fought its way to the surface. There, surrounded by the timeless sturdiness and cold sharp scent of the grey stone, he could feel himself to be part of his land, and forget just how many years had spun by in the land below him as he waited in his dark castle.

This memory, this string of memories, of scents and sounds and emotions, ran through his mind, pulling him from the rough ride, the cold scent of stone replacing that of wet wool and the stink of sweating men. It even allowed him to briefly forget his Master, the cold and stern human that loomed above him as he sat on the muddy coach floor.

x x xx x x

It was that memory, and what he had accomplished with the viola, that gave him the creative outlet and expression that he needed. He could draw. If he could write a note, he could draw, could sketch. At night, he risked being seen by the staff to carefully raid each dustbin, sort through the waste. Papers with unused areas crying out to be filled, stubs of candles with a bit of wax remaining, once even the treasure of a pencil. Broken, but it only needed sharpening. He needed light...one could tune, could play, by touch and with the dim gray vision of a vampire in a lightless tomb. But one could not DRAW, not truly, not without light. The handful of gas lights were under the control of Abraham, he could not simply light one.

So he hoarded his candle stubs, searching and sneaking them from rubbish bins under the eyes of the staff. Not many candles were used now, but there were always those rooms that lacked the gas lights and newer electric bulbs. Expensive to buy, disruptive to install, many of the servants' rooms had only candle, lantern, and the rays of Sun and Moon to illuminate them. And so he filched candles, taking them from the dust bins and rubbish. Tightly-rolled papers (and there was an abundance, a richness of papers, waiting for him when he was brave enough to creep into Hellsing's empty office! Master's bin was overfilled, overflowing, with so many sheets, often rich and soft and textured papers, too!) burned slowly, taking the place of candles as he needed.

That one brief pencil was gone far too soon, but he had nails, and grime, and the black soot of candle wicks. Each patch of mold and decay had its own hue, and a fingernail would scoop it out, deposit in on a makeshift artist's pallette, and apply it to the scraps and bits of paper. Many nights he would be trapped downstairs and unable to access the dustbins of waste that he'd found his redemption in...but on those nights, he drew.

Creativity, as such, was not a vampiric trait. They could reproduce sounds, steal another's ideas for their own, draw what they had seen or experienced...but daydreams? No, none but wistful thinking. But they could CREATE. As he'd created memories with music, now Alucard put memories onto paper. Glimpses of the faces of his Brides, a laughing eye here, the deep curls that fell so gracefully across a shoulder there, even the three wolves dancing playfully across the snow on a night too fine to remain inside. A few memories of his human years, of a horse he had owned, a fine warhorse he had been so proud of, retired to successful stud when age and injury had removed it from the battlefield and tourneys. The proud curve of the neck and the flying hoof, a great saucer of heavy nail that could kick repeatedly on a stall door to ask for hay, or land with heavy finality on a falled foe to crush. The name had long escaped him, but the power and pleasure of riding that beast in partnership had remained.

The land, too, was lovingly detailed. A curve of the road where he'd met his second Bride, railing and cursing her recalcitrant donkey as it refused to pull the cart any farther (and with reason, for he had been beyond those trees and the beast had known this!). She'd charmed him with her energy and anger and verbosity (what a range of words she knew! and spoken with a fluency and precision so rarely found in peasants) as much as her simple beauty, and he'd taken her immediately to their mutual joy, changing her willing living vibrancy into a shadow undead vibrancy that existed long past when a mere mortal would have reverted to dust and mould. A tree, another favorite perch and lookout, atop a high hill and commanding a clear view of the distant road tracking up the mountainside.

It was slow, forming those shapes and visions from scraps of paper and bent nails, but they formed. Each night, from waking til sleep, with only the briefest of interuptions by Hellsing, was filled with the pleasure of filling papers. His memory, his past, which was HIS...though Hellsing said a tool needed no memory or past, only its job and a place to hang it...it came out onto the paper. He had a deep terror, and justified, that Hellsing might one day find a way to rob him of his memories as fully and firmly as the man had robbed him of freedom and of his powers. If the man could, he would. And so, while they existed, he poured out all the images and emotions onto all the papers he could scavenge.

And many of those images were from his old vantage point atop his castle. Seeing this, he began collecting, organizing them. Some were summer, others winter...but they were placed correctly and carefully, lining the walls and ceiling and even the floor. Had he stood upon the parapet and looked out, what he would have seen was faithfully reflected in what he saw as he stood in front of the makeshift door and looked at the walls of his prison.

He had stopped making individual drawings of random memories. Instead, he focused with the bright burning intelligence and dilligence of a vampire on recreating this favorite retreat. Sticking them to the wall was difficult but there was no shortage of unpleasantly tacky surfaces, and it was only a matter of time to determine which types held their adhesiveness the best and longest. And then those substances held the papers, in all their random sizes, weights, textures, and tones, upon his walls.

As weeks went by, a picture might be removed, and detailed yet more finely. Others were simply a poor perspective, outsized or miniscule in relation to their wall mates. Each was removed, perfected, replaced. Overhead, the beginnings of constellations were starting to fill the slanted ceiling, the stars of his homeland. A few papers showed the initial phases of the parapet drawings, with the edges of the stones delineated for a scant handful. Only a few hunts marred his creation, pulled him away from it for the night...but those, too, were enjoyable though the events surrounding them (the coach, the presence of Hellsing) were not. He could stand in front of the little door, look about his room, and forget, briefly, that it was a small and dank little cell in a dank and dirty basement where he had been held prisoner for a long, dreary, dull, deadening time. Instead...he could look out at the land he had ruled, hunted, been born in, died in, on top of the parapet, with stars at his head and forests at his feet.

x x xx x x

Whatever had lessened his vampire's ability had passed. Abraham was pleased to see the expected instant obedience he'd drilled and forced into the beast return, and its natural grace of movement. It had less fortunately returned to tormenting its prey, the one habit that it seemed unable to break. As long as the prey died, Abraham had little opinion about the suffering it experienced. As long as the weather was fair and the vampire did not delay them terribly, he was willing to indulge it rather than rush it through a kill. It made for a more eager, willing vampire; like a hawk whose hood had been removed, it was taken from the mews of the basement and released on the field to hunt its prey...and the prey was shredded with the fury and power of the predator that it was. Forcing it to hunt quickly and cleanly had been a disaster, the vampire frustrated and balked and fighting instinct and inclination every step of the way. Not fighting Abraham, no, but having to fight itself to force itself to obey.

It exhausted the beast. And so it was allowed to be a beast during its hunts, which it relished...and the lack had worried him on the hunt when it was missing. But the bloody predator was returned, and Abraham ceased fretting about the lifelessness and dullness the vampire had exhibited.

And then a new soure of worry appeared.

He'd torn his office apart, even pulling up the rug to see if the papers had somehow slipped under it - if they had fallen on the floor at all. He'd gone through each and every paper he'd filed, frustrated and near-panicked. There was sensitive, important information on those pages. Once read, he'd thoughtlessly tossed them into the wastebin with the others and gone to bed...and realized that the papers were accessible to staff, could end up out in the dustbins and rifled through by beggars! Sensitive documents were always filed away or burned, never left intact, and he'd raced back to his office to burn them immediately.

And they weren't there. The last papers on top of the dustbin were not those damning damnable pages, but only a mundane inventory. Under that, newspapers, and a handful of envelopes, a few missives from doctors he communicated with, a handful of crumpled papers from his own mistakes in writing. They weren't there. He'd filed a few papers, the folders locked safely into his drawer until they could go into the locked and safe store room, tucked away with occult books, research into the unnatural, and other papers of similar topics that Hellsing hid among its secrets. No folder contained anything but what it should.

They were not in his room, accidentally carried to his bed. He had not burned them, had in fact burned nothing at all that evening. Had they somehow been stolen? A more thoughtful dig through his rubbish, tipped carelessly across the floor. Yes. The first few pages of a letter, but the last one missing. A list he'd checked and double-checked, then discarded when satisfied. A few others, from announcements to invitations to brief notes, missing. He hadn't misplaced those papers, someone had, indeed, stolen them.

And there was no time to waste. He needed to find that person and those papers, and quickly. He only hoped it was an innocuous reason, such as padding or kindling or paper to sketch upon...but none of the staff should have rifled through his office at all! It was entirely off-limits and carefully locked, the keys closely guarded!

He'd used his vampire as a bloodhound before, testing the limits of its physical abilities as he tamed and broke it to obedience. It would be able to scent who had been in his office that evening, but to identify that scent with a specific human might be more difficult, perhaps impossible...the beast had been kept far from staff, after all. A summons, and then anxious pacing as he waited for the creature to appear. And it did, dull face ghosting through the wall to stand dully in front of him, dull expression radiating a dull indifference.

"Alucard, someone, besides myself, has been in this room in the last few hours and taken something from it. Use your senses, find out who." The vampire...had that been a flicker of fear? or mere interest? or merely the waking of its mind from a near-trance? Alucard blinked, gaze forming and sharpening a bit, and then the vampire roamed about the room, sniffing the air slightly, looking closely at everything but not touching. Pacing a bit himself, Abraham watched the monster closely, fighting impatience and worry.

"Alucard, do you know who was in here? Can you smell them?" The vampire stopped, slumping, and nodded slightly. "Who?" A demand, not a question, and the vampire slumped slightly more...but did not speak. "Who, dammit! Tell me NOW!" And the vampire said something very surprising, in a soft, barely-audible voice...

"Me."

x x xx x x

Master was...furious. The trash he'd pilfered had not been trash, but something needed. And now Abraham demanded it back, not yet asking where it had been taken or why, only demanding it. But... Alucard had no idea which of the papers Abraham wanted! He'd visited a dozen-plus waste bins, scavenging candles from some, papers from others, and both treasures from a few. There was a pile of new papers in the hiding-hole, and several had already been decorated and placed on the wall. If it had been placed on a wall...there was no way Abraham would miss that it had been drawn upon. And he had a sinking, terrible feeling that the wall was exactly where it was, two fine soft sheets of paper being the first ones he'd pulled from the stack. He'd been so pleased at the quality...such papers were rare...and the papers Abraham wanted were most probably those two sheets.

Go get them. Now. Shuddering, fighting to hide it, Alucard passed through the wall and down to his decorated room. The small stack of new papers...were any of them possible? Yes...yes...maybe these... Good paper, too, nearly as good as the ones on the wall. Abraham had told him nothing about what was on them, only described them as thick and cream-colored. So he took them, and returned to the office to present them. One had the beginnings of a sketch of a pine tree on it, he'd been mid-line when Master pulled him away.

x x xx x x

The damn vampire had brought back a pair of invitations he'd tossed. Pretty, worthless bits of paper. Frustrated at its incompetence, stressed at the missing pages, he crumpled the trash in his hands...wait. What was this? A drawing? He didn't remember that being on the paper, and it was an odd greyish ink, perhaps a colored pencil? A touch with a finger...damp. It was damp? Alucard stood there, mute, staring at the floor...a beast. A monster. Surely it couldn't have done this... was it supplying paper to someone in the house? That was more likely though how the vampire got around the directive to not interact with staff, he had no idea. "Who drew this?"

The vampire's answer had him shocked, surprised, and torn between rage and amusement. His vampire drew? Ridiculous, it was not supposed to draw, much less steal from his office! It was expected to wait quietly in the basement until needed. It was fed, it had its own room used for nothing but the vampire, and it was even allowed the run of the house with the only stipulation being to leave the staff entirely alone! And its decision - and since when did it get to do that? - had caused him hours of stress! And so it could DRAW.

What other important papers might it have stashed away? One way to find out... "Show me your other papers. I want to see what you have stolen." A wince... "All of them, if you've taken papers other nights, I want to see them. Get them." Reluctance...the beast was slow to respond...was it hiding something? What could it be hiding? He expected it to simply bring him a stack of papers...

x xx x

Bring him all the papers? There were so many...it would take time, so much time, to pull them down and bring them to Abraham. And to destroy so many hours, days, weeks of effort, to demolish the small retreat, the only bit of happiness he'd found? He'd bring back all the papers he had filched that night, would that suffice? No...the spell that controlled him warned him...no. ALL the papers, and what he had stolen...he'd need to bring the candles, too. Everything.

What would Master do?

x x xx x x

Delaying, the damn creature was delaying. It was supposed to obey, quickly, and it knew the penalty for delays or obstruction. The crop lashed out, leaving a stinging smoking welt down the beast's cheek, and drawing a faint whimper from its throat. Red eyes, now wide and shocked and frightened, stared at the wall...then dulled again though the vampire moved quickly towards the wainscoting. No, he'd keep the vampire from hiding whatever it was. He'd make the vampire take him to those papers, see what he'd hidden. Had it found some of the papers with spells and mystical notes, ones that might contain a key to escape its prison? It lacked the ability to blackmail him, at least he hoped it did...some of the papers could be damning in the wrong hands, for his work had to be kept secret and concealed from public simply due to its nature.

"Wait. Walk to them. I am going with you." The beast actually staggered a bit, and the dull face changed suddenly, showing a shocked fear and dread beyond what he believed the beast could be capable of feeling. Fear and dread of being whipped, yes...dammit, what HAD the creature been doing that it expected a punishment severe enough to shock it out of its obedient lethargy?

Not long after, lantern in hand, he was ducking through a low entrance into what should have been a dusty, empty room.

Instead, in the lantern's glow, he found himself standing in the mountains, had the mountains turned into dim greys and greens, faint blues and rust reds, faded browns and dull blacks.

Each and every wall, even part of the floor and ceiling, was covered with absolute layers of scraps of paper, each one containing a finely detailed bit of landscape. He could only stare in shock, amazement, surprise, speechless...how could a vampire do THIS? It had to be the vampire...no human would have tried this. And...HOW? Over there, a small stack of papers, only a half-dozen, a handful of sharpened nails, a board with odd blobs of color on it. Where had he gotten anything colored? A tumbled pile of bits of wax and candle stubs, by a bare and cleaned space where the vampire must have been drawing. And...what? A violin? The remains of one, it had no strings, and a bow that was a frayed mess. Why had it taken a broken, worn-out violin?

His stunned amazement ended when he spotted, at his feet, the very papers he'd been hunting for. They were positioned at the base of the wall, and careful grey lines and shadings made them look much like stones themselves. Enough of the distinctive cream paper remained bare to identify them...and yes. Ripping them off the wall, they did indeed have the handwritten letter from the Prime Minister himself on the back. He'd burn those, burn them now...and while doing so, decide what to do with this...thing...his beast had made. Alucard was simply standing, mute and frozen after leading him here, face and body once more dulled and limp.

How had THAT...created THIS? Unbelievable. But first, to burn this. And then he'd have to hunt through the whole damned room to find what else the vampire had gotten that needed to go up in flames!

x x xx x x

Master was gone. Hadn't done anything, just...surprised. Took his papers, yes. Had seen the viola.

This... was bad. Anything he valued, Abraham used to control him. Freedom to wander the house, his (hah!) coffin, meals, even true clothes instead of rags...if it had any value to him, Abraham knew it. And would remove, damage, destroy what he valued when the man wished to exert his power or "train" him.

No matter how much joy and peace his room had brought to him, it would now only be a source of control and dismay. Looking around, it changed...it was no longer the vast vista of his lands, but a tacky layer of mismatched scraps of paper, hung with foul bits of sticky slime, scratched on and color with mildew and rust. And even that, Abraham would destroy when convenient (now?) to train him to the man's standards and requirements.

He could remove this tool, at least, from the man. The furnace was unlit, the weather far too warm...but it would hold and burn all that he had. White hands flashed, becoming gray with grime, as the forest was clear-cut, the castle tumbled, the sky fallen. Scraps were bundled into balls, rolled into logs, so that they could be carried, raced to the furnace, thrust in the door, and then have yet more piled on. Again and again, the work of weeks gone in minutes. On top of the stack, athwart the trees and stones and stars, rested the remains of his viola. His matches, dropped by some unknown long ago and carefully hoarded, were pulled out to light.

The forest burned.


End file.
